CSTO plans to expand its military contingent

CSTO plans to expand its military contingent

12:52|14/ 05/ 2007

MOSCOW, May 14 (RIA Novosti) – The Collective Security Treaty
Organization (CSTO) is planning to create a large military contingent
comprising units and formations of several Central Asian states, the
head of the post-Soviet security group said Monday.

CSTO members – Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia,
Tajikistan and Uzbekistan – use the organization as a platform to
fight drug trafficking, terrorism, and organized crime, and have
pledged to provide immediate military assistance to one another in the
event of an attack.

The bloc has a Collective Rapid Reaction Force deployed in Central
Asia, and is continuing to build up its military forces.

"We are planning to create a larger [military] contingent on the basis
of a Collective Rapid Reaction Force in Central Asia that would
comprise units and formations from four or five Central Asian states,"
CSTO Secretary General Nikolai Bordyuzha told a news conference at RIA
Novosti.

Bordyuzha said that experts are finalizing the coordination of a draft
agreement and documents on effective combat strength and deployment of
a new military contingent.

He also said the next meeting of the CSTO’s Collective Security
Council has been scheduled for July 17 in Moscow to discuss the
organization’s peacekeeping mechanisms.

The CSTO is widely viewed as a post-Soviet instrument for preventing
NATO’s further eastward expansion and to keep Commonwealth of
Independent States (CIS) countries under Russia’s military protection.

Russia earlier said a united regional air defense system could
encompass almost all the territory of the former Soviet Union within
the CSTO framework in the future.